


Fight For Life

by Aaronna



Series: Soldier of Healing [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Burns, Cauterization, Death, Gen, Graphic Description, I will try to add them to the notes, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by MuffinLance's Tumblr, Near Death Experiences, Near Suffocation, No beta: we die like men, Ozai's A+ Parenting, Pre-Herbalist!Zuko, Some Character names are borrowed from other authors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26291059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaronna/pseuds/Aaronna
Summary: Zuko wasn't challenged to an Agni Kai, he was sent to fight with the soldiers he had been trying to protect. He saved some, but not as many as he had hoped.Pre-Herbalist!Zuko
Series: Soldier of Healing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910278
Comments: 52
Kudos: 834
Collections: The Best of Zuko





	Fight For Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).



> If you like this, thank MuffinLance. If you dislike this, blame MuffinLance. Just kidding. This is my take on her AU(s).

Zuko didn't understand. Well, not all of it. He understood that he was being sent to fight with the soldiers the general wanted to use as a distraction. What he didn't understand was why his father agreed to such a waste of lifes or how he could condemn his own heir to die alongside them.

He knew his father was angry he had spoken up so vehemently, but to send his son, too young to participate in the war in the eyes of the law, to die as bait. It didn't make sense. Did he hate Zuko?

The boy couldn't think of anything he had done that would have turned his father to send him to die. He knew his father was strict, but this was beyond that. The Fire Lord wanted the crown prince out of succession, permanently. It wasn't like with Uncle, who was allowed to keep his title with any of the power that came with it.

Until he understood why his father wanted him gone, Zuko was going to do whatever he could to survive. He wasn't going to go down without a fight and he was going to save as many of those recruits as he could. After all, Uncle always said he was more stubborn than an Earthbender, he would meet this obstacle head on and shape it to his will.

'(•V•)'

Commander Lee was an old man. As such, he knew this was cruel and evil. Sending his boys and girls he only been training a few weeks to right in the shadow of Omashu was his punishment for opposing the Fire Lord in front of the entire council. But this wasn't the truly vile part.

The fact that the young prince had mirrored his crime and was now sent to die in this trap was nothing short of deplorable. The child was barely 13, yet here he stood in the command tent explaining why they needed to move the camp from the valley to the forest. Commander Lee could see the burning, protective passion in the prince's eyes and gave the order.

He didn't see how it would help, but he believed that Agni's blessing was on the boy, so he trusted him. If even a handful of the division survived, it would be worth it. He prayed that Prince Zuko would live to see his plan succeed.

'(•V•)'

Hana had been on guard duty patrolling the edge of their new camp when it happened. The ground shook and then a young voice rang through the woods, ordering everyone to get up into the trees. She followed without a thought.

She watched as about half the division acted like she had and double timed it into the forest canopy. From her tree, Hana had the perfect vantage point to watch Commander Lee exit his tent only to be swallowed by the dirt he had stood on. That was when it hit her why that voice wanted them in the tree limbs.

It is harder for an earthbender to bury you alive if you aren't touching the earth.

'(•V•)'

Chen wasn't sure how long he had been buried, but he knew he was lucky he had been rescued at all. His vision was swimming, but he was sure he saw a kid holding swords to an earthbender's throat. When he coughed out more soil than he thought was possible, he looked around to see a bunch of the area that had been empty before was now covered in soldiers hacking up dirt.

Looking around, he thought he saw the kid again, but with all the flying flame and stone, he couldn't be sure. He counted his blessings he was alive and started digging where he had seen others sink into the ground before he had been swallowed too. When those around him recovered enough, they joined in to try to free as many of their countrymen as they could before it was too late.

A few grabbed their own earthbender to unearth the buried, but by the time the experienced fighters arrived and the fighting stopped, those they uncovered were already dead. This didn't stop them though. They deserved a proper Fire Nation burial, not some unmarked grave deep in the heart of the Earth Kingdom.

They worked through the screams of the wounded having injuries cauterized. They worked as the worst, but stable enough to move, injured were loading up and sent off to a healer. They worked until Agni's light faded and the number of dead outnumbered the living.

Roughly 15,000 soldiers had set up camp in that forest the day before. Nearly 6,000 dead were given pyres and their ashes sent home to their families. 4,000 were still breathing, but a quarter of those were barely lingering. Come dawn, Agni would shine on the 3,000 soldiers that lived to tell the tale of the 41st division.

'(•V•)'

Sergeant Zu Len had been one of the ones who got in the trees when the order rang out. When the earthbenders had entered his area, he had leapt from his perch, fists alight. The fighting was a bit of a blur to him, but he remembered when the stone shot up from the ground slicing him open.

Pain followed. A lot of yelling too. Then came the agony.

He hadn't thought, just reacted. He reached up, found what felt like a large, hairy knee and set it on fire. Another scream joined his as the pain increased, then went away with the other cry of pain. As the pain faded to a throb, he opened his eyes to see what had done.

He had just branded the face of a child. This one was too young to even be a recruit, too young to be so close to the fighting. This kid had saved his life sealing his wound and he repaid them by maiming them at best and sentencing them to a slow, painful death at worst.

He couldn't even tell if the child was a he or a she, just that he had practically melted a large part of their face off. He had been demoted 4 times for various offences real and imagined, but this would be the thing he was most ashamed of. He almost wished the kid has let him die. At least then they would have a whole face, not the mess he had just made of it.

Any further thoughts on the matter were interrupted by two medics he had never seen before. One started checking over the kid while the other finished tending to the injury on his side that seemed to reach from his belly, over to his side, and then up to his armpit. He didn't realize he was apologizing until both of the healers tried to calm him down. He must not have been calming because next thing he knew, they were pouring tea down his throat, then his body grew heavy and he passed out with tears on his face.

'(•V•)'

Moai had been a medic in the army for 30 years. He had served under General Iroh at Ba Sing Se until the death of Prince Lu Ten. He had seen a lot of death, but none of it had shaken him like this battle.

15,000 young men and women, barely trained, had been ambushed by an elite Earthbender group and nearly won, but at the cost of 4 out of 5 dying. Given the stories being told, the count would have been worse if not for a child with a poorly tied topknot that had gotten feet off the ground, that had forced benders to release soldiers from their living graves by holding blades to their necks, that had been treating the wounded with nothing but their bending and the clothing of the dead. The very same child he just saw cauterize a nearly fatal wound while the man they were helping lashed out in pain was burning the young healer's face.

He and his assistant raced over as quickly as they could. The child had passed out, but the burn never touched soil, so they at least had that in their favor. The poor man came back to himself only to break down at the sight of what he did. He let his assistant handle the man, hopefully keeping shock from setting in, while he tried to keep the child alive.

He ended up helping dose the man with willow-poppy tea when he got more and more hysterical, so they could both work on the child, who looked to be approximately 12. The boy had been sealing wounds without a face covering to keep the smoke from his lungs, so he was having trouble breathing on top of the handprint melted into his face. They might have been able to help a few others with the extra time they spent on the child, but those were cases that only might survive while they knew they could save this boy, as long as they put in the time.

By sunset, he was stable enough for them to leave him in the care of a yuyan heading for the stronghold at Pohuai. There was an Earth Kingdom herbalist outside their walls who was said to work miracles and didn't care what nation her patients were from. Hopefully she could save the savior of the 41st division.

'(•V•)'

General Huong felt sick.

He had received a hawk as they were cremating the dead from Fire Lord Ozai. Prince Zuko had been visiting the 41st to help train the recruits. He had been with Commander Lee when the camp was attacked. The Fire Lord had known the plan, yet he had let his son walk into the trap.

He had seen all but a few of the survivors and none of them were the prince. He checked with those assigned to the pyres, none of the bodies had been Commander Lee or Prince Zuko. That left them as 2 of the 5,000 that they had not unburied.

Huong replied to the Fire Lord feeling like he had betrayed his nation by reporting that they had lost yet another prince to earthbenders. Like his cousin Lu Ten, Prince Zuko lay buried away from Agni, spirit trapped beneath foreign soil. With heavy heart, he sent the hawk back to the caldera with a message sealed with black ribbon.

'(•V•)'

Kuzon of the Yuyan was wishing he hadn't sworn not to talk out loud. He had been put in charge of a kid with one of the nastiest burns he had even seen someone survive and the kid kept whimpering in his sleep ever since they developed a fever. He had a broken leg from falling into a pit trap, so he was one of the most able bodied of the injured, so he was the one supposed to change the bandages, check the kids breathing, and cool their brow as their temperature rose, which was why Kuzon wished he could mumble soothing words to the kid.

Thankfully, a hand stroking their hair seemed to settle the kid. He assumed their mother had done something similar. His own mother had, especially when he had been sick.

He was worried though. The fever was climbing and the rags were doing nothing. He didn't have medicine for the fever or the pain. He wasn't sure if the hitch in the kid's breathing was from the smoke or pain. He was half afraid that the fever was from a chest infection and not the burn, but he wasn't a healer, so Kuzon just kept following the instructions he had been given.

Taking the kid out to relieve themself was a chore Kuzon couldn't help with since his leg had him barely able to support himself, left alone adding the kid. This meant they had the teenager, who had his eyes cut by rock chips, was the one to help the kid. That may have been a good thing, seeing as none of them knew if the kid was a slightly masculine girl or a pretty boy. It wasn't like they were going to look to find out.

After a week, the fever was dangerously high, but they were finally at the herbalist's mountain. They would have gone straight to the stronghold, but they were all so worried about the kid that they broke protocol. Kuzon and the kid were among those that had to be carried up to the healer's greenhouse.

The old woman tutted at them and set to work in a way that had them all questioning the woman's sanity, but they couldn't deny the results. She got the kid to cough up ashy phlegm and the fever dropped, but didn't break. It was weeks before the kid woke up enough to focus on something, other than the Herbalist's demon cat, and when they did, they thought they were a spirit.

They actually took to calling the kid Spirit after that. It was better than always calling them 'kid', but Kuzon really wished he knew Spirit's real name. Sadly, he had to leave before the fever broke, so he never did get to ask them their name.

'(•V•)'

He had failed. He understood that. He had set out to save the 41st division, but he saw how many died. How many he wasn't good enough to protect. If only he had been more persuasive, fast, less weak. He hadn't been able to save them.

He felt he deserved his burn, as now others could see he had failed. He just wished it didn't hurt so much. Watching the ground pull them under had been like reliving the stories of Lu Ten's death and pain of that lost repeating over and over again. The pain of the burn only distracted him from the pain of failure.

Despite all of that, he was relieved his mother had finally found him. She wasn't one to whisper lies about how it would be better soon. Instead, she would smooth down his hair and run a cool hand across his brow. He thought Lu Ten was there too, helping him to relieve himself, which wasn't possible unless he was almost dead and he was being cared for by ghosts, but that would mean his mother was dead too. Not wanting to dwell on that thought, he just let them help him.

Then they were gone, replaced with bitter teas and cool, gnarled hands and a warm, rumbling weight on his chest. He remembered coughing until it felt like a small badgerfrog came up from his lungs and forced its way out of his mouth. Suddenly, he felt much better and less guilty.

Every time that pressure and warm vibrations returned to him, he felt the blame he had placed on himself shifting to the generals in that war room and then, to the Fire Lord. Zuko wasn't going to call the man his father now. He could see now how sending him off had been Ozai's way of getting rid of the child he saw as weak and crowning Azula as his heir.

He didn't remember when he decided he was going to give up his old life, but he remembered when he got his new name. He had been feverish and thought the cat was talking to him when he was asked who he was. It was the only thing he could think of, because normal cats don't talk, but it became a joke, and then a name. Spirit.

'(•V•)'

Miyuki was older than anyone thought. It was said she was 28 years old and it was thanks to her carefully prepared diet, but that was nonsense. She was ageless as all spirits were.

It was rare that a human realized what she was, but the sickly kitten she was tending did. The poor thing had locked up several chakras and it was making them even sicker, so she intervened. Maybe it was her work on untangling the kitten's chi that allowed them to sense her true self, but it was of little consequence. She had a disciple now.

She was a healing spirit and she was going to train this kitten in her arts. And like any kitten, this one would have to learn to fight and fend for itself. But first, the kitten needed to heal.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired By or Characters Borrowed From:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034752  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971342  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/20110900  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/23989858


End file.
